


The One Thing I Want (For My Birthday)

by jujubiest



Series: SPN One-Shots [20]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Birthday Fluff, Dean Winchester's Birthday, He's 42 today, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:14:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28961538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: Dean turns 42, and gets everything he wants.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: SPN One-Shots [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/177362
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	The One Thing I Want (For My Birthday)

**Author's Note:**

> Un-beta'd because we're all too emotional for editing today.

Dean wakes up on his 42nd birthday with his heart already pounding fit to escape his ribcage. He stares up at the ceiling of his room, willing himself to calm down, trying to put his thoughts in order.

Today’s the day, he thinks. Win or lose, I’m doing this today.

He takes a breath. Then another. Then he gets up and starts getting ready for the day ahead.

By the time he walks into the kitchen, hair still damp from the shower, the smells of coffee and toast have permeated the room. Jack is at the table with a bowl of Crunch Cookie Crunch. Sam is at the stove, looming over what looks to be a sorry attempt at a pancake, glowering. And Cas...

Cas is right there at Dean’s elbow, too close (not close enough), smiling tiredly as he offers Dean a cup of coffee.

Dean takes it gratefully, with a hand that definitely doesn’t shake at all even when their fingers brush together in the transfer.

“Happy Birthday,” Cas rumbles in a voice still heavy with sleep. Jack echoes the sentiment from his place at the table, eyes bright, and Sam turns around to join in with an apologetic grimace.

And that’s when it really hits him.

This is the first birthday he’s had--hell, the first any of them have had--since Chuck. And he’s forty-two. Older than his mom ever got to be. In another decade he’ll be older than his dad. Older than he ever thought he’d live to see, and that’s every birthday from now on: another year older than he ever expected to be.

And he’s looking forward to it, to all of them. He’s so goddamn excited to get old.

He decides not to goad Sam about screwing up the pancakes.

* * *

The rest of the day passes pleasantly, lazily, with all four of them just hanging around the bunker, enjoying the chance to unwind. They watch movies, Dean asking each of them to pick one and trying not to register the looks of surprise they all quickly hide away. He’s never been much for resolutions, but if he’s planning to live a life he resolves then and there to be a little kinder to his family, a little more giving.

This is immediately put to the test when Cas’s pick is When Harry Met Sally, but Dean powers through it. He watches the story of friends dancing around their feelings for each other with a nervous knot in his gut, all-too aware of the warmth of Cas’s shoulder pressing into his.

After two movies, they break for lunch, and Dean shoos a protesting Sam away from the stove as gently as possible, resolving to teach the poor guy to cook at some point during the next year.

The two afternoon movies are interrupted by phone calls and text messages, and a facetime from Eileen, as all their friends wish Dean a happy birthday. He has no idea who told them all when it was, but something about the way Sam shuffles his feet and looks pleased with himself every time a new person reaches out tells him.

He chases everyone out of the kitchen except Cas and makes dinner in a bit of a daze, stirring a pot of chili and counting up the number of friends he has--the number of _family_. It’s incredible, just how many people give a damn about him. It feels like a lot of responsibility, to have that many people care. It feels good, though, a grounding weight rather than a burden.

He’s grinning without realizing it, grinning and staring at Cas, watching him from the table with his own slightly bemused smile, when it hits him.

This is the moment.

His smile fades. He puts down the wooden spoon in his hand and turns the heat down to low, crosses the room on feet that have lost all feeling. He sits down next to Cas, whose smile has faded to a worried head-tilt.

They haven’t talked about it yet. Nearly three months since it happened, nearly two since they got Cas back, and Dean hasn’t said a word. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to ask for something that had already been offered, didn’t know if it would even be right to ask for it after he’d waited so long.

Three months? Try nearly thirteen _years._ But...

But he doesn’t want to see another birthday where Cas doesn’t know exactly how he feels.

“Cas. I, uh...” he stops. Takes a deep breath. Tries again.

“I’ve...been thinking. About what I, uh...what I want.”

Cas’s face clears. He leans in, conspiratorially, his knee bumping against Dean’s under the table.

“Don’t tell him I told you, but Sam has a pie from Jody hidden in the refrigerator.”

Dean blinks. Runs what he said back through his head, and laughs. The laugh bursts out of him, feels good, carries some of the tension in his shoulders with it.

He shakes his head, though, brings a warm hand down onto Cas’s shoulder with a grin.

“I’ll act surprised when he brings it out,“ he says. “But that’s not what I meant. I’ve been thinkin’ about what I want _in general,_ not just for my birthday. And I, uh...”

He takes a chance. A leap of faith. He slides his open palm up from Cas’s shoulder. Lets it linger on his face instead. When he speaks the laughter is gone from his voice, replaced by something softer, rougher.

“The one thing I want...it’s something I’m not sure I deserve.” He looks into Cas’s eyes, forces himself not to look away as understanding filters in behind the confusion.

“Dean, I...”

“I love you,” Dean blurts, graceless and too-loud and true. It’s wonderful, and terrible, to finally say it, to hang all his hopes and fears out there on three little words and wait for someone else to embrace them or crush them underfoot.

He understands now why Cas could only do it when he was dying. Understands it beyond the deal he made, why it was easier to carry it around unsaid and live with the not knowing. The moment between saying it and knowing, the last moment of could he, will he? It’s the most excruciating moment of Dean’s life, and it seems to draw itself out forever, stretched thin between them.

Cas’s eyes are wide and surprised and so, so blue. Dean wants to fall forward into them, a shard of metal drawn to a magnet, helpless. But he holds himself back, holds steady, waits for Cas to say something.

Cas doesn’t make him wait long. He pulls Dean in with both hands, stopping short with barely a breath between them, and Dean closes that final gap, lets his eyes fall closed as he presses a kiss to Cas’s lips, finally, _finally._

It feels like he’s been waiting to do this forever, but for all that waiting and tension their first kiss is a soft, quiet thing. He cups Cas’s face in his hands and kisses him gently, carefully, like they’re both made of paper-thin glass and one wrong move with shatter them. Only the shiver that runs through Cas’s shoulders and the tight grip of his hands on Dean’s wrists tells him how much Cas is holding back, too, how much want is waiting there, pent up behind that calm exterior like angel’s wings folded away into shadows.

He wants, too, wants everything Cas is hiding behind those eyes as they pull back and just look at each other, breathe each other in. And he gets to have it, he realizes, it’s there, it’s his. He falls forward after all, wraps Cas up in his arms in a hug so tight it’s just shy of painful, and feels everything in him settle and exhale and calm when Cas’s arms wrap around him too, broad hands pressing into his back.

“You deserve every good thing, Dean,” Cas says quietly, into his hair. Dean leans into that voice with an intake of breath that’s just short of a sob. He doesn’t believe it, not yet, but he’s willing to learn better.

And the way Cas holds him tells him Cas is more than willing to stick around until he figures it out.


End file.
